(1) John will work on being able to manage his gambling and will no longer gamble. (2) John will refrain from managing his own money and will discuss all purchases with his wife. (3) John will continue to attend personal therapy for his problems and will continue to attend relationship counseling or therapy with his wife.

The treatment team will assist John in setting reasonable goals and working on being able to follow through with said goals.

John was diagnosed as having pathological gambling. This disorder is composed by someone who is unable to manage on his/her own without gambling continuously. In order to fulfill this diagnosis the gambling has to have a negative affect on the gambler, in this case John could be losing his home and has ended several relationships because of the problems that had occurred on behalf of his gambling (“Pathological…” 2007).

If someone were to only talk to John they might assume that John did not have such a terrible gambling problem and that he is just depressed or some other diagnosis to explain what could be explained to the therapist as “occasional gambling.” Talking with John’s wife was what was influential in part to the decision of the final diagnosis. Therefore it was critical that the therapist be able to talk to John’s wife.

Case of Beth—

Diagnosis—

Axis I—Moderate Depression

Axis II—Dissociative Personality Disorder

Anxiety Disorder

Axis III—no diagnosis

Axis IV—history of abuse as a child, history of abuse from husband, abuse and mistreatment by daughter

Axis V—GAF—75

For the treatment plan, Beth’s goals could be easily accomplished by her.

(1) Beth will work to attend therapy to learn how to manage her emotions. (2) Beth will attend therapy on an individual basis. (3) Beth will also work on attending group therapy. (This could be a number of different types of therapy including DBT or possibly just a group for others who have dissociative personality disorder.) (4) Beth will ask her husband to participate in couple’s therapy and her family to participate in family therapy. (5) Beth will monitor the times that she experiences dissociative episodes. Beth will keep track of these issues in a journal as well as the events that had preceded and followed them.
Dissociative personality disorder is a disorder that is experienced and shared by many adults who were the victims of childhood abuse. Dissociative personality disorder has also been known as multiple personality disorder as the person tends to “escape” from the modern reality and into another personality based on the patterns of the disorder and when faced with difficult decisions. It is apparent that Beth has this disorder as Beth escaped to the personality of “George” when she was confronted with issues of her abuse as a child (“Dissociative…” 2009).
References